TOO MUCH TRAVEL?

I’ve long said that travel is the best antidote to the up-and-down swirls I feel due to mental health challenges. A quick trip to Whistler or Seattle can calm my nerves, lift my mood or just provide a preventive booster to keep me on track. 

 

I’m not sure how I’d feel about travel as part of work, the kind where you check in to one hotel after another and spend 9 to 5 in one office tower after another, then unwind in a bar seven floors down from your room. That seems like travel without the experiences that make being away from home so special. No matter how luxurious they may be, I don’t want to sign up for what are basically hotel room tours. A successful trip involves as little time in the room as possible (and time in an office cubicle doesn’t count at all). 

 

Still, I’ve often thought that, if I could land a kind of job where I’m paid to venture to cities and countries and hop on trains or roam in a rental car from city to beach from art museum to funky café, I’d have found my sweet spot. Bring on the next destination!

 

Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

But here I am, momentarily between trips, three days at home after being away most of the past month and heading out again for two more months. So far I’ve covered Taos, Denver, Halifax, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton. Upcoming: Portland, Canyonlands National Park, Denver, New York City, Dallas, Aspen and another stint in New Mexico along with a few places that haven’t been slotted in yet. 

 

To be sure, I am lucky. Privileged, in fact. I’ve loved going to each place up till now and I have no doubt I will thoroughly enjoy the places to come but these three days at home aren’t so much about rest but instead are filled with preparation for the next two months: a bike tune-up, an oil change, a laptop repair, a volunteer shift, a mortgage renewal, medication refills, a library stop, an insurance appointment, a meeting with a writing colleague, unpacking and packing, hotel bookings and loads of laundry among other things. No doubt, there is an item or two I’m forgetting. It feels like a lot.

 

I’d be okay with it—I think—if one item weren’t left off the list: writing. I define myself as a writer. Writing essays, outlining a new story and revising a manuscript bring me joy. I don’t have the time or the focus for these tasks right now and they fell off my radar during the most recent week of travel. As I take to the road for another extended period, I don’t see a time in the near future when I can fit in a few decent writing sessions. 

 

That boost I feel from travel is taking a hit from the absence of writing as my passion. I just can’t balance the two at present. It’s put me in an unfamiliar sort of funk that is clouding the glory of travel adventure.

 

Writing just doesn’t fall off my agenda.

 

Even during my first stint in a psych ward, when they took away all my possessions, including my backpack with a writing notebook, I found the fortitude and the supplies—a single sheet of white paper and one of those teensy pencils they give you at miniature golf—to write. I wrote my ideas in the tiniest print possible, filling up every inch on both sides of the paper. In my deepest ever depression, writing was what gave me hope that I could continue to be something once discharged. 

 

It’s scary to not be writing. What if ideas and inspiration don’t come back when I’m ready to slot in more writing time? What if this unprecedented break just keeps going?  

 

I have four days by myself on the road beginning tomorrow. I have a pad of paper, pens and pencils always placed in the driver’s side door pocket. As I navigate some of the less scenic patches of highway, I hope to be that guy talking aloud to himself as speedier drivers pass. Let the ideas flow again. I don’t care whether they’re about a current project or something entirely new. Let me start thinking like a writer again. Let the ideas feel so urgent and compelling that I find myself pulling over at rest stops or even the road shoulder to scribble my thoughts on that pad of paper. I normally enjoy the quiet time but I’m hoping, as this trip begins, there will be a lot of noise inside my head. The good kind. The kind that affirms that, yes, I am still a writer.

 

     

 

  

A PROLONGED ABSENCE

I know what you’re thinking. He gets a boyfriend (poor dude) and then abandons us. Typical gay flake.

But, no, it’s not what you think. Sure, I’m still navigating a new relationship (yep, poor dude), but I just haven’t had anything to write about.

Okay, it may have something to do with the boyfriend. So many of my blog posts over the years have been about dates, most of them bad ones. Now I don’t have to navigate online sites filled with supposedly single guys who supposedly want to be in a relationship or, at least, meet for a coffee. And I don’t have to use my blog as an outlet to process the endless stream of those WTF coffee get-togethers.

Married guys.

Closeted guys.

Hung over guys.

Men who show up still sweating profusely from the gym.

Guys that talk in uninterrupted monologues.

Guys that decide to sit and give me the silent treatment.

Guys that don’t show up at all.

It was great fodder for writing but utterly ego-crushing. And I didn’t have much of an ego to begin with!

I know I could have continued to communicate with you, dear reader, even without the bad dates. Maybe I could have written about the early stages of my relationship, but I haven’t talked with my partner about that and I don’t want him reading about our tiffs on a public website that two or three people glance at every so often. I made a conscious choice to preserve and protect our beginnings. A relationship needs to find its legs on its own without the meddling and the (dis)approval of family, friends and blog readers.

I may still go virtual with The State of Us. That’s one of the drawbacks of dating a writer. You become a character, fictionalized or not. If David Sedaris can do it with Hugh Hamrick, why can’t I with my man, aka, The Poor Dude? But that’s still a discussion that’s yet to come.

I could have written about other things. Pride parades and the press’ constant need to post the related pics of guys with abs in teeny tiny Lycra bottoms. Why do these attendees have a constant need to bare themselves and why do they hang in packs of two or three? Six packs stick together while Other-Bellied Gays come and go in various configurations—even, perhaps not so shockingly, alone. I could have gone political with a few posts, too. How can there NOT be a daily blog about Trump and his henchmen?! (Just this morning, I heard one of his supporters call all this bothersome inquiry into Russia “the big nothing burger.” So eloquent, so profound.) There’s also been troubling news from Chechnya and a discouraging personal “No” vote from Angela Merkel on gay marriage. Clearly, the blog could have continued.

Okay, I will admit that my boyfriend has been a most pleasant distraction. As it’s a long-distance relationship, there are a lot of late night conversations on FaceTime. Consequently, I’m not as inclined to hit the café in the morning to carve out some writing time before work. So he is a factor but not the main one. The simple truth is that my energy to write fizzled. My thoughts dried up. I lost my voice. The pressures of a new work environment consumed me more that I wanted to admit. In the past, writing served as my escape, my source of joy, my outlet for creativity. (Okay, I can see it myself…Enter: boyfriend.) The harsh reality is that I’ve struggled to find any satisfaction with the drivel I’ve typed on those occasions when I have tried to commit to my craft. I never fully told myself to go on hiatus—which would have been a healthier way to rid myself of writer’s guilt—but that’s what, in effect, happened.

So now I have summer and some time off from work. It means more time with my partner—yay! (once more, the poor dude)—but it also offers a chance to find my writing voice once more.

I appreciate your patience, dear reader, and the fact that you’ve bothered to check in again. I can’t promise regular posts, but I’ll make a better effort. Don’t blame the boyfriend. The flakiness is all me.